At 2 a.m., Santiago, a programmer in Buenos Aires, had just solved a strange problem: the YGG asset robot he managed was stuck between the Polygon and Arbitrum chains—$78,000 worth of game equipment NFTs trapped in the cross-chain bridge's 'digital buffer' for 37 hours, accruing fees every second but unable to move forward or backward.
“It's like having a container full of gold stuck in the Panama Canal,” he wrote in an internal log, “and the toll booth is charging by the second.”
Santiago is neither a blockchain engineer nor a crypto trader. He is the coordinator of YGG's 'Multichain Asset Operations Team.' His daily work involves ensuring that the guild's game NFTs, valued at over $40 million across 12 different blockchains, can safely, cost-effectively, and promptly reach the players who need them.
It sounds like a sci-fi plot, but it’s happening: a gaming guild must simultaneously become an expert in cross-chain settlement, a Gas fee optimizer, and a blockchain network risk assessor. And all of this stems from a simple fact: no single blockchain can carry all games, but YGG must serve players across all chains.
When games choose chains, the guild must keep up
In 2020, 90% of YGG’s assets were on the Ethereum mainnet. Simple, but expensive—every transaction easily costs dozens of dollars in Gas fees, which is a financial disaster for a guild that needs to conduct hundreds of small transactions daily.
The turning point came when Axie Infinity launched the Ronin sidechain. Suddenly:
· Transaction confirmation times drop from minutes to seconds
· Transaction costs drop from dozens of dollars to a few cents
· But—the assets must be ‘bridged’ from the Ethereum mainnet
· And need to manage entirely new wallets, tools, and security processes
“Our reaction at that time was very real: panic, then learning,” recalls YGG’s infrastructure head, “within a week, we had to master: 1) What is a cross-chain bridge; 2) How to assess the security of a bridge; 3) How to withdraw assets in emergencies; 4) How to unify the valuation of game assets across different chains.”
This is just the beginning. The next two years:
· Polygon becomes the main chain for metaverse games like The Sandbox
· Solana attracted high-performance games like Star Atlas
· The rise of Layer 2 solutions like Arbitrum and Optimism
· Each chain has its own rules, risks, and opportunities
“Imagine,” the technical director analogizes, “you are a multinational logistics company. Suddenly every country says: ‘You must use our dedicated railway, with different track widths, signal systems, and customs rules.’ That’s our situation.”
YGG’s ‘chain risk assessment matrix’
By early 2023, YGG officially established a multi-chain strategic framework. They assess three dimensions for each chain:
Technical dimension (can it operate reliably?)
· Historical downtime (Solana has experienced multiple outages)
· Cross-chain bridge security record (the Polygon bridge was once attacked)
· Developer response speed
Economic dimension (is it cost-effective?)
· Average transaction cost (Ethereum mainnet vs Polygon)
· Asset liquidity depth (trading volume on DEXs like Uniswap)
· Accuracy of Gas fee predictions (can we arrange large transfers in advance)
Ecological dimension (are the games active?)
· The quantity and quality of leading games
· Player community size and activity level
· Signs of ongoing developer investment
“We have an internal ‘red-yellow-green light’ system,” the risk management officer shows the dashboard, “green light chains (like Polygon) allow us to deploy assets on a large scale; yellow light chains (like new Layer 2s) are subject to limited testing; red light chains (like those with serious security incidents) we completely avoid, even if there are good games.”
This system played a key role during the FTX collapse in November 2022. At that time, the Solana ecosystem experienced severe turbulence, but YGG moved 80% of its Solana assets to Polygon and Arbitrum a week in advance—not because they predicted the collapse, but because their model detected ‘anomalous activity on the Solana chain diverging from fundamental value indicators.’
“We dodged a bullet,” the asset manager admits, “but more importantly, our players did not experience service interruption. Their assets in Solana games were migrated in advance to backup versions on other chains.”
That cross-chain ‘traffic jam’ that changed the guild’s agenda
Returning to the dilemma in San Diego. That $78,000 asset was trapped for reasons both complex and simple:
1. Technical reasons: Arbitrum’s cross-chain bridge encountered rare congestion
2. Economic reasons: the Gas fees required to withdraw assets have exceeded 15% of the asset value
3. Time pressure: this batch of equipment needs to be used for an important tournament in 36 hours
Traditional solutions are to ‘wait’ or ‘pay exorbitant Gas fees to grab priority.’ But YGG’s multi-chain team has developed an innovative solution:
Step 1: Asset segmentation
Split a single high-value NFT on the source chain (Polygon) into 10 low-value component NFTs
Step 2: Multi-path transmission
· 5 components cross the official bridge (though slow, but safe)
· 3 components cross a third-party bridge (risk slightly higher but faster)
· 2 components cross the most experimental new bridge (completely uncertain, but fees extremely low)
Step 3: Target chain reorganization
Deploy smart contracts on the target chain (Arbitrum) and trigger the reorganization program when any component arrives; collecting any 8 components will restore the complete equipment
“It’s like cutting a famous painting into ten pieces,” Santiago explains, “and sending each piece separately by express, air freight, or even carrier pigeon. As long as eight pieces arrive, we can basically restore the artwork. It’s better than having the entire painting stuck in customs.”
Result: within 36 hours, 9 components arrived, equipment successfully reassembled, and the tournament participated on time. The total cost was 73% lower than paying exorbitant Gas fees.
This event led to the creation of YGG’s ‘cross-chain sharding protocol’ standardized tool, now used for all high-value asset cross-chain transfers.
Gas fee optimization: YGG’s ‘digital energy trading’
In a multi-chain world, Gas fees (transaction fees) are no longer a fixed cost but an optimizable variable.
YGG's Gas fee optimization team discovered several patterns:
Time patterns
· Ethereum mainnet Gas fees are lowest between 2-4 PM Beijing time (midnight in Europe and late-night in Asia)
· Polygon has the lowest fees in India during the evening (when server load is low)
· Solana fees are relatively stable, but spike dramatically during congestion
Cross-chain arbitrage
· Prices for the same game asset can sometimes differ across different chains
· Cross-chain arbitrage can be achieved through cross-chain transport
· But must calculate net profit after Gas fees
Batch processing
· Bundle hundreds of small transactions into a single large transaction
· Execute in one go during the Gas fee low period
· Requires complex queue management and error handling mechanisms
“We manage Gas fees like airlines manage fuel costs,” the optimization expert says, “predicting price fluctuations in advance, ‘refueling’ at low prices, optimizing ‘flight routes’ to reduce consumption, and even hedging risks through ‘derivatives.’”
Their achievements include:
· Gas fee expenditure for the entire year of 2023 decreased by 41% compared to 2022, while transaction volume increased by 220%
· Developed a ‘Gas fee prediction model’ with an accuracy rate of 78%
· Established a ‘cross-chain Gas fee balance pool’ to dynamically allocate fee budgets across different chains
Multi-chain governance: YGG’s ‘digital diplomacy’
The most complex challenge may be governance. Games on different chains have different DAO governance structures:
· Games on Ethereum: usually vote with ERC-20 tokens, high Gas fees, but a mature ecosystem
· Games on Polygon: low voting costs, high participation, but governance mechanisms are relatively new
· Games on Solana: fast voting, but governance culture is still forming
· Dedicated chains for games like Ronin: fully customized governance models
YGG must operate in dozens of governance systems simultaneously:
1. Maintain voting rights: ensure influence in important proposals
2. Allocate voting energy: it is impossible to participate in all votes, prioritization is necessary
3. Unified voting strategy: maintain policy consistency across different games (e.g., all support ‘lowering the entry threshold for new players’)
Step 4: Manage governance tokens: these tokens themselves are also cross-chain assets
“We are participating in the politics of a dozen countries simultaneously,” the governance coordinator describes, “understanding the two-party system in the US, parliamentary system in the UK, and direct democracy in Switzerland. Each game DAO is a small digital republic.”
Their solution is the ‘governance intelligence system’:
· Monitor all important proposals
· Automatic classification (economic, technical, balance)
· Provide voting suggestions based on historical data and guild interests
· Authorize local community representatives for final decisions
“The most important thing is to trust local experts,” the coordinator emphasizes, “our Philippine team understands the sentiment of the Axie community best, while the Brazilian team knows the Splinterlands ecosystem best. The headquarters provides data and analysis, but the final vote is given to the front lines.”
Future challenges: when the number of chains grows exponentially
Currently, YGG manages 12 chains. However, industry predictions suggest that by 2025, gaming may be distributed across more than 50 dedicated chains and Layer 2s.
Challenges to prepare for:
Security challenges
· More cross-chain bridges = more attack surfaces
· Requires more advanced multi-signature and monitoring solutions
Operational challenges
· 50 chains mean 50 sets of tools, wallets, and browsers
· Human management cannot be scaled; must be highly automated
Valuation challenges
· The same game asset might have 50 different prices across 50 chains
· How to calculate the guild’s total asset net worth in real-time?
Strategic challenges
· Should we focus on a few chains for deep participation, or cast a wide net?
· How to identify early which chain will become the next mainstream?
YGG’s experimental answer: ‘chain abstraction’ strategy.
They are developing a unified layer:
· Unified wallet: players access all on-chain assets with one account
· Unified dashboard: real-time cross-chain calculation of guild asset net worth
· Unified execution: one operation automatically distributed to execute across multiple chains
· Unified security: cross-chain monitoring and emergency response
“The goal is to make the ‘chain’ transparent to players,” the CTO envisions, “just like internet users don’t need to know whether data is transmitted through fiber optics, copper cables, or satellites. Players just need to know: ‘My game assets are secure, transactions are fast and cheap, and I can use them anytime.’”
Morning reflections in Santiago
Returning to Buenos Aires. After the problem was solved, Santiago wrote a post-mortem analysis in the internal forum. The deepest insight was:
“We initially thought multi-chain was a technical issue, but fundamentally it is an organizational issue.”
“Technical problems have technical solutions: better bridges, faster chains, better algorithms. But organizational problems require: cross-team collaboration, knowledge sharing, emergency processes, and cultural adaptation.”
“YGG’s evolution from single-chain to multi-chain is not because we have the best engineers (though we do), but because we have the genes of a learning organization. When new chains emerge, we don’t complain ‘another one to learn,’ but are excited ‘another battlefield to serve players.’”
Outside, the La Plata River sparkles in the morning light. But in the digital world, countless blockchains are transmitting value, ownership, and gaming fun. Each chain is a new continent, every cross-chain bridge is a shipping route, and every smart contract is a digital covenant.
YGG's assets navigate this multi-chain ocean. They are not passively determined by the choice of chains, but are actively: choosing chains, optimizing chains, connecting chains, and even shaping the future of chains.
In the maze of blockchains, most people are looking for an exit. YGG is doing something different: learning to live, build, and create value in the maze. They do not wait for ‘one chain to rule them all,’ but are developing survival skills for ‘a complex world of multi-chain coexistence.’
Next time you hear the debate of ‘this chain is better than that chain,’ consider this: perhaps the future winner is not the one who chooses the right chain, but the one who learns to create value on all chains.
And YGG is becoming a candidate for such winners—learning one chain at a time, solving one cross-chain challenge at a time, serving one player community at a time.
In the dawn of the multi-chain era, the game has just begun. And YGG has already received the first map for navigating in a complex system.
